I learned to love gardening at an early age. I was born and raised in suburbia for the most part. And no matter where we were, my mom always had a garden. Every May, we’d go out and dig a hole, and plant some tomatoes. Eventually we started planting lemon cucumbers as well. Just those two plants provided enough to put smiles on our faces. Nothing beats the smell or taste of a fresh tomato. She also grew herbs and incorporated them in meals so seamlessly that I never knew.
She learned it from her father. She grew up in Jersey City, and they always grew something even if it were just a flower.
There is a great joy in being able to connect to earth and the life cycle of a plant.
When I first moved into my house in 1995, I had a large patch in the back yard, and I’d occasionally plant a tomato but I was “busy working” all of the time. That was in my 20s when I didn’t know or understand about life balance. I would regularly fertilize the citrus trees and they provided me with too many oranges and limes in the winter.
Then my mom died and I withdrew. The oranges were OK but the lime started producing crummy limes and then it finally just died. I stopped putting together pots of color flowers in the summer for the front porch. And I was like a seed in winter waiting until it was warm enough to sprout. And then, I realized how important it was for me to provide the love of gardening to my daughter. So I planted 6 tomatoes directly into the ground and 2 survived. I planted three sunflowers and they all died. Hrm. Something must be not great with my soil but I didn’t know enough then.
Around this time, there started to be very disturbing news about tainted spinach, etc. and I realized how important it is for my health to grow my own vegetables, or as many as I could. And as is typical in life, I discovered a book on growing vegetables in self-watering containers. It solved the problem of the bad soil, and it solved my concern about watering.
Then, I found an ad for self watering containers from A Garden Patch. So in typical fashion, I ordered 30 of them. I had the whole garden planned out. And it didn’t disappoint, believe you me. It was a bumper crop. So then I got into preserving & pressure canning which ended up going into pressure cooking. Hrm, I think that’s another website.
So welcome to my website. I hope I can inspire you to set up some plants in pots. They don’t have to be self-watering to be successful. And the joy you will get out of caring for a plant will be worth more then you can imagine.
